UK+Economics

England gains it's money by selling stuff like jets off to other countries and by big investors investing in big English businesses or clubs. Most of it's income comes in from trade, which mostly involves us giving things like aid in return for fuel or electronic devices.
 * Economics of the UK**

Although recently there has been a bit of a slump in the economy, as a big bank called Northern Rock has gone bankrupt and loads of money has had to be pumped into the bank to keep it afloat, but now with the bank now being nationalized (under direct government control), so slowly the economy is growing back, but with banks also lending out too much money in mortgages the economy could go down again as people can't afford the repayments. A major item that has gone up in value is housing.

Houses have begun to be worth more for a few years now and people fear that they are going to drop steeply soon.

This may be a good thing for people who are moving in to the country as they will be able to buy houses cheaply, although it isn't as good for people in the housing business, unless they can sell before the drop in value.

England has also had many other economic crisis', like in the 60's with the fall of British Leyland, a motoring company which made many cars that broke down quite a lot, for they were put together by old men, but not many cars got through the company for they spent a lot of time on strike, they eventually went bankrupt and got nationalized.

A lot of other British car companies have been set up since then and have been successful, and then been bought out by Americans like Jaguar and Aston Martin. This is an example of how England makes some of it's money, and since then Aston Martin has been sold off and is now officially English again!!! The country has also lost out at many other money making things, with hardly anyone getting married in the UK these days, and with petrol prices going up people aren't buying as much fuel as they have done.

This isn't as bad as people actually think, because this means that if we're buying less petrol, then we are doing the planet a favour, by releasing less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere... So maybe petrol prices rising is a good thing that will help in centuries to come.

A great way of earning money in the UK is by investment. There have been many business/investment programs in England on the TV that have been running for a long time, like Dragons Den, and the most famous... The Apprentice, which is a show where Alan Sugar, the UK's leading businessman picks an apprentice to do jobs for him for £100,000 a year. The show has just finished it's fourth series with Lee McQueen winning the show.

If somebody invests an amount of money in a company, they get some shares of that company.

If the invested company rises in value, the shares rise in value too, so that the person who bought them can sell them on for a profit. However, if the company drops in value (like Northern rock did), the shares are worth less, so investment is a risk.